pete myershttp://www.readthehook.com/taxonomy/term/3057/all
enMysterious milky water at Sugar Hollowhttp://www.readthehook.com/104214/mysterious-milky-water-sugar-hollow
<p>Pete Myers has been visiting Sugar Hollow for 20 years, and he calls the milky milieu he saw last weekend "astounding." Says Myers, "I've never seen anything like this here, ever."</p>
<p>He's not the only one who has noticed changes in the complexion of the reservoir.&nbsp;</p>
<p>Rivanna Water &amp; Sewer Authority analyzed the water June 11, and it's safe to drink, says executive director Tom Frederick&#8211; but they have no idea why it's so cloudy.</p>
http://www.readthehook.com/104214/mysterious-milky-water-sugar-hollow#comments_BreakingNewsFeaturedCommunitySnap o' the DaySnap o' the Day STORYHealthpete myerssugar hollowNewsTue, 12 Jun 2012 20:38:45 +0000lisa104214 at http://www.readthehook.comThe week in reviewhttp://www.readthehook.com/103875/week-review
<p><strong>Biggest chain reaction: </strong>Some local purveyors at the City Market are upset that Great Harvest Baking Company, a franchise, is allowed a highly coveted space<strong>, </strong>contending the popular farmers market is for local producers. <a href="http://www2.dailyprogress.com/business/2012/may/05/franchise-producer-only-city-market-draws-complain-ar-1893911/">Graham Moomaw has the story in the <em>Daily Progress</em></a>.<strong><br /></strong></p>
<p><strong>Biggest surprise for Albemarle supes:</strong> That adding chloramines to the water supply is controversial. <a href="http://cvilletomorrow.typepad.com/charlottesville_tomorrow_/2012/05/chloramines_dam.html">According to <em>Charlottesville Tomorrow</em></a>, both Ann Mallek and Ken Boyd expressed concerns at the May 2 meeting that Rivanna Sewer and Water Authority reports did not mention that some people consider chloramines unsafe.</p>
<p><strong>Worst news for Ragged Mountain dam opponents:</strong> At that same meeting, RWSA director Tom Frederick says the project will proceed despite a lawsuit contending that City Council acted illegally in okaying the new dam.</p>
<p><strong>Worst commute:</strong> A tire-blowing dump truck on eastbound I-64 goes into a ravine near the Ivy exit around 6am May 2, backing up traffic for miles and for hours.</p>
<p><strong>Worst driving:</strong> Daniel Shifflett, 21, of Greene County allegedly falls asleep behind the wheel and plows into a Stanardsville house around 8:30pm May 5, NBC29 reports. He's charged with reckless driving and improper brakes.</p>
<p><strong>Worst driving on a suspended license:</strong> <span>John Kevin Moore, 29, of Crozet allegedly rear ends an Albemarle police officer May 4 on Ridge Street, <a href="http://www.wina.com/pages/13036968.php?contentType=4&amp;contentId=10545840">WINA reports</a>. The officer is treated for minor injuries at UVA Medical Center; Moore is charged with following too closely and driving with a suspended license.<br /></span></p>
<p><strong>Worst idea:</strong> Waynesboro man Christopher Hecker is charged with threatening to kill President Barack Obama and bomb the White House and other sites, the AP reports. Arraigned in federal court in Charlottesville on May 4, he reportedly tells the judge he doesn't want an attorney and is seeking the death penalty. He's ordered to undergo a psych evaluation.</p>
<p><strong>Latest slum-ward slide of a primo property: </strong>The State Fire Marshall goes to court May 4 to order Inn at Afton owner Phil Dulaney to immediately install fire detectors in 19 occupied rooms or move the residents out, <a href="http://www.newsleader.com/article/20120505/NEWS01/205050323/1002/rss">according to the <em>News Leader</em></a>.&nbsp;</p>
<p><strong>Latest verdict for a convicted killer:</strong> John Wesley Morris, 54, who has a history of shooting people, including two men who died in a 1984 dispute at Hardee's (as well as his own cousin, who, in a separate incident, survived getting shot in the back), is convicted in the 2011 shooting of his girlfriend, Lisa Ann Clements. Struck in the neck, Clements suffers partial paralysis, Samantha Koons reports in the <em>Progress</em>. The jury recommends a life sentence for aggravated malicious wounding and use of a firearm.</p>
<p><strong>Most tragic leap: </strong>A 55-year-old allegedly drunk man jumps off a bridge May 1 at Lake Anna that warned, "No jumping or fishing from bridge." The man was motionless when he surfaced, <a href="http://www.newsplex.com/home/headlines/Man_Killed_After_Jumping_Off_Louisa_Co_Bridge_150050005.html">according to the Newsplex</a>, and was declared dead at the scene.<strong><br /></strong></p>
<p><strong>Most bizarre search-and-rescue: </strong>The family of a 53-year-old woman reports May 3 that she's missing, is ill, and not behaving normally. Her van is found running in a Monticello parking lot that evening, according to a release. As search and rescuer Tom Payne checks out a remote trail on an ATV around 1:30am, he's injured by a leaping deer that knocks him off the vehicle. The woman is found around 2:30am, apparently hallucinating. Both she and Payne are in stable condition.<strong><br /></strong></p>
<p><strong>Most emailed <em>New York Times</em> article:</strong> A May 2 Nicholas Kristof column called <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/03/opinion/kristof-how-chemicals-change-us.html?_r=1">"How Chemicals Affect Us,"</a> about the dangers of endocrine disruptors like bisphenol-A, which is widely found in food packaging, quotes local scientist Pete Myers, <a href="http://www.readthehook.com/82265/facetime-myers-watch-dont-heat-plastic">who has long sounded the alarm on BPA</a>, and who was just named chairman of the board of the H. John Heinz III Center for Science, Economics and the Environment, a DC think tank.<span> <br /></span></p>
http://www.readthehook.com/103875/week-review#comments_BreakingNewspete myers4Better Or WorseThu, 03 May 2012 13:56:32 +0000Hook Staff103875 at http://www.readthehook.comSnap o' the Day: Odd bird spotted in McIntire Parkhttp://www.readthehook.com/88767/snap-o-day-odd-bird-spotted-mcintire-park
<p><a href="http://www.petemyers.net/about%20JP%20Myers.html">Ornithologist</a>/environmental <a href="http://www.readthehook.com/82265/facetime-myers-watch-dont-heat-plastic">scientist</a> Pete Myers captured this exotic breed he believes may be a hybrid of Big Bird and a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoopoe">Eurasian species</a> called the <a href="http://www.google.com/images?q=hoopoe&amp;oe=utf-8&amp;rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&amp;client=firefox-a&amp;um=1&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;source=univ&amp;ei=RJpETbyRAYWglAe4sYky&amp;sa=X&amp;oi=image_result_group&amp;ct=title&amp;resnum=2&amp;ved=0CDUQsAQwAQ&amp;biw=1290&amp;bih=707">Hoopoe</a> on January 28. Then again, it could be an offering from Art in Place. We don't really know.</p>
http://www.readthehook.com/88767/snap-o-day-odd-bird-spotted-mcintire-park#commentsSnap o' the Dayart in placemcintire parkpete myersNewsFri, 11 Feb 2011 21:40:06 +0000lisa88767 at http://www.readthehook.comBaby bottle-makers bag BPAhttp://www.readthehook.com/72377/baby-bottle-makers-bag-bpa
<p><img class="alignnone alignleft" src="http://www.readthehook.com/images/issues/2008/0723/facetime-myers.jpg" style="float: left;" border="0" />The six biggest makers of baby bottles have <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/05/AR2009030503285.html">voluntarily agreed</a> to stop using Bisphenol A, or BPA, a material strongly decried by locally-based researcher <a href="http://www.readthehook.com/Stories/2008/06/05/FACETIME-myers-B.aspx">Pete Myers</a>. A <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/03/AR2008090303397.html?hpid=topnews">recent study</a> may have helped lead to the recent decision.</p>
http://www.readthehook.com/72377/baby-bottle-makers-bag-bpa#comments_BreakingNewsHealthpete myersOnline onlySun, 08 Mar 2009 13:25:53 +0000hawes72377 at http://www.readthehook.comMyers' watch: Don't heat the plastic http://www.readthehook.com/82265/facetime-myers-watch-dont-heat-plastic
<p class="p1">&nbsp;</p>
<div class="captionLeftPortrait"><img src="/images/issues/2008/0723/facetime-Myers.jpg" border="0" /><br /><b>Pete Myers<br /></b><small>PHOTO BY JEN FARIELLO</small></div>
<p>Now that Canada has branded them dangerous, the hazards lurking in Nalgene and baby bottles are all over the news, but they're nothing new to White Hall resident Pete Myers, who warned about such endocrine disruptors way back in 1996 in a book he co-wrote called <i>Our Stolen Future</i>.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p class="p1">Myers' top three suggestions for avoiding bisphenol A? 1) Don't microwave in plastic; 2) Minimize the canned food you eat; 3) Don't chew on thermal paper.</p>
<p class="p1">The latter is from receipts, and if recycled, they contaminate everything, according to Myers. "That's just now coming to light," he says. "Pizza probably has BPA from the cardboard box."<span class="Apple-converted-space">&nbsp;</span></p>
<p class="p1"><span class="Apple-converted-space">&nbsp;</span>Myers, 58, first became aware that some plastics (and other common modern-life materials) can turn our hormones upside down in the early '70s, when he was working on his Ph.D. in biological sciences at Berkeley. He came to Charlottesville in 1990 to head the now-dismantled W. Alton Jones Foundation, and currently heads Environmental Health Sciences, a non-profit which compiles daily news about environmental health issues.</p>
<p class="p1">How bad is exposure to bisphenol A? "I think it's pretty serious," he says. "The levels in all Americans are above levels found to cause harm in animals."</p>
<p class="p1">He explains the BPA paradox. Studies done in the 1980s at high-dose levels of 50 parts per <i>million</i> resulted in dramatic weight loss in laboratory animals, and it was assumed&#8211; "not tested," stresses Myers&#8211; that much lower levels of 50 parts per <i>billion</i> were safe. It turns out that it's the lower levels that mimic estrogen, and have been linked to diabetes and obesity, "the biggest problems in public health right now," he says.</p>
<p class="p1">An accomplished Power Pointer, thanks to the 30-plus lectures he does a year, Myers illustrates the effect with a picture of two white mice, one of which is extraordinarily obese. The two are the same mouse strain, were fed the same number of calories, and did the same activities. The only difference is that the fat mouse was exposed to 1 ppb&#8211; one part per billion&#8211; of a synthetic estrogen similar to BPA, which "seems to convert stem cells into fat cells," he says.</p>
<p class="p1">When not traveling, "If it's above 48 degrees and not raining, I work from a platform in the woods," he says. He rises before dawn to aggregate the day's environmental health news with 50 other editors from around the world.<span class="Apple-converted-space">&nbsp;</span></p>
<p class="p1">"I think he's doing a wonderful job informing the public of climate change and toxic substances in our environment," says Jason Halbert, an environmentalist who worked with Myers at W. Alton Jones.</p>
<p class="p1">U of MO's Fred vom Saal, who's led the charge against endocrine disruptors, praises Myers' Environmental Health News website's aggregation of scientific articles. "He created something incredible that everyone I know, whether scientists or journalists, uses to verify information. This is not PR."</p>
<p class="p1">All is not aggregation on his White Hall platform. Myers has captured some birds and wildlife up close, which resulted in his first photography shows&#8211; "Uncommon Views"&#8211; in March at Mudhouse and in Vermont.</p>
<p class="p1">(And while Myers hasn't seen the alleged Crozet cougar himself, he says he's spoken to two eyewitnesses he finds credible.)</p>
<p class="p1">A visitor to the Environmental Health Sciences offices is surprised to see plastic soft drink bottles in the recycling bin. "I drink out of plastic bottles," says Myers. "If you can squeeze them and they can crinkle, they're okay... we think."</p>
<p class="p1">A large green glass casserole sits atop the fridge, and Myers suggests eBay as a good source for microwavable glass. "Heat and plastic are a bad idea," he reminds.</p>
<p class="p1">Myers is headed out of town later to testify before a Senate committee in Washington.</p>
<p class="p1">An environmental health scientist's work is never done.<span class="Apple-converted-space">&nbsp;</span></p>
<p class="p1">#</p>
http://www.readthehook.com/82265/facetime-myers-watch-dont-heat-plastic#commentsbisphenol Apete myersFacetimeWed, 02 Feb 2011 08:16:13 +0000lisa82265 at http://www.readthehook.com